Or at least that's what this guy says. Believes Seattle is running on first down to try and protect Russell Wilson, not just to be boring and predictable. But then says that said predictability just isn't worth the protection.

This analysis bears out my observation that Wilson has often looked awesome out of unpredictable downs like 2nd-and-4. Most offenses do. Some of his greatest moments have come during drives in which we could reach that down-and-distance repeatedly, putting Wilson in a rhythm and defenses in base packages. (It also suggests that Bevell is at least competent at deploying versatile personnel looks on 2nd-and-short, otherwise we wouldn't look so good there.) The problem is that even running games as great as ours can't reliably pick up 6 yards on every first down, unless you're playing the Rams.

Along these lines, look how successful the Seahawks offense has been when they come out of the gates flinging the ball around. Against the Rams and Pats I believe Rice caught 15+ yard passes on the first or second play. Both led to scoring drives.

Defenses are expecting us to run Lynch early to set the tone, but Wilson has really surprised some defenses by taking a couple mid-range shots early.

I miss Jeremy Bates. PC fired him for giving up on the run too often, but what might he have looked like here without the 2010 defense that constantly had him down by three scores by the third quarter?

RolandDeschain wrote:Our predictable play-calling is the largest impediment to our offense, in my opinion.

yes yes yes......i've been saying this for 6 games now... bevell has got to step it up, and i actually put the blame on caroll's shoulders for not talking to bevell about better adjustments... i said it in a post a while back, run, run, pass is a recipe for disaster for a rookie q back, unless you're extremely succesful running the ball. but if you are constantly putting your q back in 3rd and longs where the defense can pin it's ears back , well we have all seen the results. yet bevell calls these types of games week in and week out, the exception being carolina and NE, where he actually passes on 1st downs here and there, we digressed last thursday in the second half especially, back to the run, run, pass... which equaled fail, fail, fail....

I think the biggest issue with the playcalling is 3rd down playcalling. In the GB and SF games We'd run the ball twice and pick up 6-7 yards leaving us with a 3rd and 3-4 yards. The problem as I see is that when we get into these manageable situations we go from the I-formation into a shotgun, oftentimes in an empty backfield. The disadvantage to me is that this eliminates the likilihood of a run and so the defenses have an easier time stopping it. What I'd like to see is to stay in the I-Formation perhaps remove a TE and bring in a slot WR.

That way you can either run or pass, you can also utilyze play action. Whereas that's not possible with the numerous times we've employed Shotgun/empty looks.

I think the playcalling is better, though I'm of the opinion that playcalling is 1/3% responsible for success. The other 2/3 comes from proper execution and frankly, through 7 weeks we just haven't executed well enought (or consistently enought)to sustain drives and to caplitalize in the redzone.

jlwaters1 wrote:I think the biggest issue with the playcalling is 3rd down playcalling. In the GB and SF games We'd run the ball twice and pick up 6-7 yards leaving us with a 3rd and 3-4 yards. The problem as I see is that when we get into these manageable situations we go from the I-formation into a shotgun, oftentimes in an empty backfield. The disadvantage to me is that this eliminates the likilihood of a run and so the defenses have an easier time stopping it. What I'd like to see is to stay in the I-Formation perhaps remove a TE and bring in a slot WR.

That way you can either run or pass, you can also utilyze play action. Whereas that's not possible with the numerous times we've employed Shotgun/empty looks.

I think the playcalling is better, though I'm of the opinion that playcalling is 1/3% responsible for success. The other 2/3 comes from proper execution and frankly, through 7 weeks we just haven't executed well enought (or consistently enought)to sustain drives and to caplitalize in the redzone.

I like your line of thinking on 3rd down formations.

Would it or would it not be an added side benefit to RW of this formation to have fewer WR's running around to have a shorter, simpler progression, thus getting the ball out quicker and less likely to miss an open target?

MontanaHawk05 wrote:I miss Jeremy Bates. PC fired him for giving up on the run too often, but what might he have looked like here without the 2010 defense that constantly had him down by three scores by the third quarter?

I've been semi-discussing this for a couple of weeks. I feel like Bates was given the axe way too early. He was treated as if he was another Gregg Knapp in how quickly they canned him and basically didn't even talk about it. It was a total blindside to me. I felt like he didn't exactly see eye-to-eye with Hass, but then Hass was a goner anyway, so why did it matter? He actually made Jay Cutler look like all-pro or maybe even Superbowl quality good for a year.

Maybe he doesn't have as bright of a future as I thought, but he seemed like one of the more creative young minds on the offensive side of the ball that was coming up through the ranks of NFL coaches. Somebody mentioned it was because the Hawks thought they could sign McDaniels to take over as OC immediately as he got fired by Denver. I wasn't aware that there was any interest there from either direction.

I guess if the Hawks wanted to, they could hire quite a few offensive minds after this season as it looks like lots of teams will be scrapping their coaching staffs. Nobody was that into it last year due to the weird offseason, but after this year more teams will be ready to just cut bait and start over.

HawkFan72 wrote:Along these lines, look how successful the Seahawks offense has been when they come out of the gates flinging the ball around. Against the Rams and Pats I believe Rice caught 15+ yard passes on the first or second play. Both led to scoring drives.

Defenses are expecting us to run Lynch early to set the tone, but Wilson has really surprised some defenses by taking a couple mid-range shots early.

Agreed. That Bleacher article on Wilson said he leads the NFL in scoring plays of 20+ yards. If our receivers can hang onto the ball RW can do some damage. We sure could use a resurgence of former UM standout Braylon Edwards to along with Rice.

I think this "run, run, pass" perception is not accurate. I could be wrong but I was under the that impression myself a couple games ago and went and looked at the play-by-play's for 2 or 3 games and it wasn't like that at all. But this is also just my perception, I could be wrong without really going through each game.

I'm still with the people that believe the play-calling is predictable though even with the limitations on the rookie QB.

Its peoples keep saying that it is run run pass and moan and groan on game day saying its everytime when it does happen but its not true.Its only about 30% of the time.Considering there are only 4 combinations of 1st and 2nd down I think it is mixed up pretty well.The problem isnt the run run, the problem is the pass part.Picking up 3rd and 4 should be easy.Any QB in the league should be thriving in that situation.This isnt a bash Wilson thread I have stayed out of the whole debate.But he isn't where we need him to be yet.

Justafan, 30% IS practically all the time. You can't run that play hardly ever and expect it to be successful unless you have a really dominant running game. The problem is, running on 1st & 2nd downs and not converting just broadcasts your 3rd-down play to the defense...it should be run like 3% of the time. >.>

With the addition of Moore, I'm actually surprised we don't run more 2 TE sets. Think about it:

Start out the game with an up tempo run game, with a 2 TE set. Get up to the line quickly, so the defense can't subsitute, then using the same personnel package, you run the ball, and then alternate with 1 and both TEs going out into routes. This would keep the defense in a base run package, while getting mismatches with most base LBers on Miller and Moore, or McCoy. All 3 of our TEs can get separation from 80% of the LBers in this league easily.

Sidney Rice can also beat many one on ones, and if Tate can live up to his reputation as being that good in space, I'd like my chances with him on the outside in one on one situations as well. We could also go to a "jumbo package" with Rice and Edwards on the outside.

I'd script the first 15 plays this way, then maybe run another 10 with different personnel packages. It would be extremely difficult to game plan on the defensive side when a team that can run as well as us would come up in a run package set with 2 TEs, then either run or pass out of the same formation, while not allowing the defense to substitute, or sometimes not even get set. It would be a total abberation to the rest of the game, and allow us more freedom throughout the 2nd, 3rd and 4th quarters.

Right on point. I've always thought this too. It's amazing that brilliant football minds can't figure this out as well.

Our best drive of the year was against STL. Anyone else wonder why Lynch was able to go for 22 and a TD on 1st and 10 run? Well it's because we had passed on 1st down many times earlier on the drive. It was truly a balanced offense. Run Run Pass is not balanced.

30% is actually a third of the time.Not even close to everytime..from a math standpoint.25% would be an even distribution considering you have 4 combos you can run on 1st and 2nd down.If tendencies are what you are worried about.So Bevell is actually mixing it up pretty well.I am glad the Rams game was brought up.That first drive we had 5 first down plays and Lynch ran on three of them.Including his 18 yard TD.In that game we we did the run run thing 5 times and got 4 first downs.We should have ran more that game.The reason Lynch made that run was the rams sucked at run D.We were averaging over 6 ypc and lost.We should have steamrolled those f$%#@^^.The rams should have been sitting at home questioning their manhood like Dallas was.Its not playcalling its execution.